Troubled Geographies

Ireland’s landscape is marked by fault lines of religious, ethnic, and political identity that have shaped its troubled history. Troubled Geographies maps this history by detailing the patterns of change in Ireland from 16th century attempts to "plant" areas of Ireland with loyal English Protestants to defend against threats posed by indigenous Catholics, through the violence of the latter part of the 20th century and the rise of the "Celtic Tiger." The book is concerned with how a geography laid down in the 16th and 17th centuries led to an amalgam based on religious belief, ethnic/national identity, and political conviction that continues to shape the geographies of modern Ireland. Troubled Geographies shows how changes in religious affiliation, identity, and territoriality have impacted Irish society during this period. It explores the response of society in general and religion in particular to major cultural shocks such as the Famine and to long term processes such as urbanization.

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

The research that produced this book was funded by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council/Economic and Social Research Council’s Religion
and Society Programme under grant AH/F008929/1 “Troubled Geographies:
Two Centuries of Religious Division in Ireland.” ...

1. Geography, Religion, and Society in Ireland: A Spatial History

Even today, more than a decade after the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement,
which marked an end to the Troubles, the visitor to Northern
Ireland
cannot help but be struck by the interplay between religion, ethnonational
identity, politics, history, and geography. Protestant areas are demarked by
the Union Flag ...

2. The Plantations: Sowing the Seeds of Ireland's Religious Geographies

The major plantations of Ireland, which were put in place during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, were an attempt, or a series of attempts,
to establish a Protestant population from England and Scotland in Ireland.
This occurred for both political
reasons—Protestant England was worried
about the threat that Catholic France and Spain could pose ...

3. Religion and Society in Pre-Famine Ireland

The first population censuses were taken in Ireland in 1821, 1831, and 1841,
but while they contain geographically
detailed information about the distribution
of the population, they did not include any information on religion.
The Commission of Public Instruction, Ireland, taken in 1834, does,
however provide us with data on religion for this period. ...

4. The Famine and Its Impacts, 1840s to 1860s

It has almost become a cliché to argue that Ireland’s population development
over the last 150 years has been unique. It is the only developed nation
in the world with a current population below that in the mid-nineteenth
century and the only European country to have suffered a century of demographic
decline in its recent history.1 ...

5. Toward Partition, 1860s to 1910s

It is clear that the Great Famine of 1845–51 had a profound effect on Ireland,
leaving its mark on a significantly altered and diminished society. It is
also clear that the Famine’s impact was not uniform across the entire island.
The death and dispersal it caused were catastrophic, but the processes it set
in train were just part of an ongoing demographic tragedy for Ireland. ...

6. Partition and Civil War, 1911 to 1926

By the beginning of the twentieth century, division had emerged as the primary
motif of Irish society. There were many reasons, both economic and
social, for this, but their impact was to divide Catholic from Protestant both
psychologically and geographically.
The last all-Ireland
census occurred in
1911, as Partition was to follow in 1921. ...

7. Division and Continuity, 1920s to 1960s

The Boundary Commission of 1925 confirmed the territorial settlement of
Partition. Ireland would remain divided. In many ways Northern
Ireland
and the Irish Free State had the same central problem at the start of this
period: the 1921 treaty had created two states, but it had not created two
nations.1 ...

8. Toward the Celtic Tiger: The Republic, 1961 to 2002

Up to this point the story of the south of Ireland’s economic fortunes has
been characterized by an agricultural economy blighted by stagnation and
failure. From the beginning of the 1960s a series of policy changes would
occur in the Republic
that would have profound consequences for the state
not simply in the economic sphere but in the social, political,
demographic,
and even religious realms. ...

9. Stagnation and Segregation: Northern Ireland, 1971 to 2001

The late twentieth century saw a stark contrast between the experiences
of the Republic
of Ireland, described in the previous chapter, and those
of Northern
Ireland over the same period. While the Republic
saw rapid
economic progress and a decline in religious divisions, the situation in
Northern
Ireland was almost the reverse. ...

10. Communal Conflict and Death in Northern Ireland, 1969 to 2001

The conflict in Northern
Ireland known as the Troubles started in the late
1960s and largely ended following the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement
of 1998, although a decade later violence continued to occur, albeit at a
much reduced level. The violence led to over 3,500 deaths. ...

11. Belfast through the Troubles: Socioeconomic Change, Segregation, and Violence

The city of Belfast provides an illustration of much of the division and interdependence
that have taken place in Ireland over the last two centuries.
Belfast’s success as an industrial city did much to separate the economy and
outlook of the Protestant northeast of Ulster from the rest of Ireland. ...

Figure 12.1 shows the distribution of Catholics in 1834 and compares this
with their distribution in 2001/2002 as interpolated onto 1834 Church of
Ireland dioceses. In many ways very little has changed: Catholics make
up the vast majority of the population over much of the island with the
exception of Ulster, especially east Ulster, ...

Notes on Methods and Literature: From Historical GIS Databases to Narrative Histories

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